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Book Commentary: Where is the Mango Princess?

You are what you eat: The Gut as the “second brain”

    Love is one of the most popular topics discussed among different age groups and across different cultures. Its entrancing and addictive nature has encouraged scientists to explore the neurological basis of this emotional phenomenon. However, this paper questions the perspective that love arises from a set pattern of activity in a number of designated neural structures. It instead proposes that the definitions of love set in place by different cultures influence and give rise to unique patterns of neural activity that lead to the experience of love. Thus, love is unique to the individual and does not arise from a generalized pattern of neural activity.

Normal 0 0 1 1427 8139 67 16 9995 11.516

Normal 0 0 1 1427 8139 67 16 9995 11.516

Editing Memory

It selects, eliminates, alters, exaggerates, minimizes, glorifies and vilifies also, but in the end it creates its own reality, its heterogeneous but usually coherent version of events; and no sane human being ever trusts someone else's version more than his own. 

By definition, a stroke occurs as the result of a blood clot in an artery or as the result of a burst blood vessel. Either way, the result leads to an interruption in blood flow to an area of the brain. When this happens, brain cells in that brain region suffer from lack of oxygen and begin to die. As brain damage begins to occur, the abilities associated with that area of the brain become lost. The abilities lost during stroke typically include speech, movement and memory.  The extent of impairment experienced by a stroke patient depends on where in the brain the stroke occurred and how much of the brain was damaged. 

The Language Spiral
How Society Evolved Language


Claire Ceriani
Spring, 2010

Senior Thesis
Adviser: Dr. Paul Grobstein
Bryn Mawr College


Table of Contents

I.    Introduction
II.   The Neurological Basis of Language
III.  Examining Social Evolution
IV.   Language as Created by Social Interactions
V.    An Example of Modern Language Development

Brain damage is generally considered in terms of the functions that are lost.  Damage to the motor cortex causes loss of motor function.  Damage to the visual cortex causes blindness.  We rarely think about the possibility of new functions emerging when old ones are lost.  There is an increasing amount of evidence, however, that suggests that the loss of one function may allow another one to emerge, and that the brain is capable of creating new functions to compensate for the loss of an old one.  The study of aphasia, which is usually associated with the loss of a function, provides insight into how new functions may emerge in the damaged brain.

Uncertain how to begin my commentary on Temple Grandin’s Animals in Translation: Using the Mysteries of Autism to Decode Human Behavior, I revisited my book commentary for Paul’s Emergence class, which I took in the spring of my freshman year.